Tuesday, February 19, 2008

So. Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid are out of the upcoming Pepsi campaign. Ishant and Rohit, the two new Sharmas, will be roped in to feature in the new ad of the soft drink giant, which specializes in making liquids which look bad and taste evil. This new move is part of Pepsi's long-term strategy of taking in young, promising cricketers and turning them into old, non-performing assets, so that P. Chidambaram can later come along, disinvest them and sell them off to Larsen and Toubro.

SomeDude, official spokesperson for PepsiCo, said this was not, in any sense, a replacement of the old guard. It was just giving a chance for the new spirit(that the youth bring) to shine through. PepsiCo chairwoman, Indra Nooyi, was busy featuring on Most Powerful Women lists and was unavailable for comment.

I don't understand what Pepsi has against India. Agreed, some people feel their drinks taste like shit and look like the blood of Sauron. Also, Delhi-based CSE has been snapping at their heels repeatedly, with several state governments reacting knee-jerk to the CSE findings and banning the sale of said blood-of-Sauron drinks from educational and governmental institutions. But a whole lot of easily-influenced people do buy their products, pouring in crores/billions of rupees into their coffers. Additionally, no other country in the world would be as tolerant of the environmental damage they reportedly cause as India. Being thus, it is rather ungrateful of Pepsi to embark on this iconoclastic venture. Every time a new player emerges, it seems, Pepsi has to sign them up for expensive, silly-looking ad campaigns and ruin their career. For a while, no new player emerged worth ruining. So, Pepsi made that really sad ad with Sourav Ganguly, with him saying he was trying really hard to get back into the Indian team and could he please have a chance else his mother, who was currently tied to certain drums and barrels in the hideout of the evil Molaram, would be blown to smithereens along with a brother who looks like film and television actor Sachin and sister who ties her hair in two pigtails and carries her bag to college with the long shoulder strap resting on her head oh please please please let me play!

Sehwag, Yuvraj and Kaif were denigrated in less offensive ads, leading to a swift loss of form for them. Does anyone know where Mohammed Kaif is now? I heard he was hosting his own satirical antakshari program now, with contestants having to sing songs insulting Sharad Pawar, no matter what alphabet they ended up with. Or something.

So goodbye, Ishant and Rohit Sharma. It's been nice having you with the team. You've played well, the two of you. Fine bowling spells have been the norm from Ishant while Rohit Sharma has played some solid knocks. This is the end, I'm afraid. This is as far as you go. No more purple patches for you, no more consistently match-winning performances. You're on the money train now.